Sunshine Challenge 2020 #7: The Creative Process is often Violet

[silveradept]

The final sunshine_challenge prompt is on the last of the Newtonian spectrum, violet. Here's the prompt:

Violet is a cheerful color that is associated with a variety of things including: originality, self-esteem, insight, poetry, discernment, understanding, creativity, music, perception, inhibition, and health.

Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones. — Bruce Garrabrandt

Insight, understanding, and creativity are some wonderful qualities to concentrate on for our final 2020 prompt. Here we ask you: what things are you able to offer others to bring a little sunshine into their lives?

If you are able, we encourage you to share the things you could offer as gifts. Maybe you can offer to make icons, fanmixes, sketches, or drabbles? Or to leave a kind word on someone’s fanwork? Maybe you are fond of gathering photos from the web or can share favorite recipes?

Don’t take on more than you can handle, but if you are able to share one nice thing for another participant, that would be great! If taking requests is not feasible, please do answer the prompt as you are inspired to. We’d love to see what you’re able to share. ♥

Which is not what I was expecting to talk about at all today, instead having queued up thoughts about imperial purple and possibly spiraling outward from there into something that would be vaguely fannish, possibly involving Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and all of the other children and the things that tempt them from the path, including the part where even Charlie strays, but manages to keep himself alive. But instead, I get to talk a little bit more about things that I do.

As a creator, my primary contribution to fandom as such is in writing. That's usually fic, although occasionally I put up things that are more meta in nature. I feel like I might be the reverse of a lot of people's fic outputs in that I tend to write almost exclusively for exchanges (there's something nice about getting a story for yourself as well as writing one for someone else), but it took a certain amount of encouraging myself that I could do the thing and produce something that would be appreciated before I did it. (And those things were appreciated, which helped boost confidence.)

You see, I don't think of myself as a particularly creative person, at least in the sense of having ideas on my own and transforming them into completed works, starting with "nothing" and creating a thing out of that nothing. I'm much more of a refiner, a person who can take the kernel of someone else's idea and produce something out of that, or to help someone develop their idea by asking questions and trying to understand things better, which might provide insight on how to get past their block, whatever it may be. Which is its own form of creativity, sure, but it's not "creativity" in a culture that lionizes the single genius rather than the team that often supports the lead and deserves as much credit for the result as the person who collects fame and accolades. (There's also all the calculations that have to happen for something to be good, because there's no single, universally-applicable metric to any work to indicate its quality. Numbers may be due more to size of fandom than skill, but in exchanges, you're writing for someone specifically, so is it good and successful if that one person enjoys the thing immensely, regardless of whether the rest of the fannish universe does?)

Despite saying I'm not creative, well, the Pern meta is into several hundreds of thousands of words, and the count of works available on AO3, well, it keeps going up, let's say. So long as someone else provides the spark, I seem to be able to do things just fine. Which is a skill in of itself, and something refined with practice. (And occasionally, those original ideas come through as well.)

So, in the spirit of offering things as gifts, I'm offering to rubber duck. (Quack.) If you've got an idea for something, and it's something you can talk about, even if I don't know the fandom or the context, I'll do my best to provide a useful suggestion for you. And who knows, it might spark a conversation and some creativity.

Comments

[shipperslist]

That's an interesting take on creativity.

You know, I wonder if any creators feel they're especially creative? I mean, I like to write AUs but so many of my works are just my own traumas and experiences written out. To me, writing is therapy and if other people enjoy the words I vomit out, well, good for them! Kudos-wise I'm well off but I still don't think I'm that creative. I'm just...having therapy or having fun.

[silveradept]

I think some amount of that comes from socialization, too, and that only certain kinds of people are expected to be creative geniuses and allowed to believe they are.

I think there's creativity involved in therapeutic writing and having other characters experience and work through their issues.

[shipperslist]

Very true. 💜

[shadowhive]

Ohh that woulda been a good thing to talk about Violet.

While I do like writing for myself, I have to admit I prefer to write something that I know someone would like. Best for an exchange, kink meme or just a gift for a friend. I considered joining an exchange recently but a: my fic brain has been blank lately and 2: I couldn’t even come up with prompts for what I wanted.

Aww rubber duck, I’ve not heard that term before. I wish I had something to put for it but my creativity is basically zero sadly. (I had something I was working on but my mind just... won’t co-operateat all)

[silveradept]

What was the thing you were working on before you hit the wall?

[shadowhive]

I was working on a fic idea I’d had last year, an Umbrella Academy AU with an eldritch abomination and a cult but I just kinda... stalled(and I’m not even near any of those concepts!)

[silveradept]

That sounds interesting. I haven't seen Umbrella Academy. Was something like this going to borrow from Lovecraft mythos or some other eldritch abomination?

[shadowhive]

Oh it’s definitely worth a watch, I’m rewatching season 1 before the new one Friday.

A little. One of the members of the academy in the series could spawn tentacles from his chest, so the au was going to have a version of him like that that was worshipped by the cult. But like I said I didn’t get there (I’ve started it with Diego being seduced unknowingly by a leader of the cult and then leading to that)

[silveradept]

That sounds like a good way to start. Are these stabby sacrificial kinds of cultists, or more like groupies who insist on following you around everywhere you go?

[shadowhive]

Thanks! It’s a little of both I think. The idea of them is still a tad vague really

The ironic thing? After starting it info on season 2 came out and there is gonna be a cult in it around Klaus!

[silveradept]

So close!

But also, possibly, useful fodder for getting your own story started. You already know how end cult was going to find Diego, so maybe you'll get to borrow them from their S2 appearance and make a nice AU.

[shadowhive]

Yeah!

Yeah it might be! Though these seem a different kinda cultists (at least from the pics)

[silveradept]

So there needs to be a few adjustments to things, but it might make a good base to base things on.

[alexseanchai]

"rubber duck" in this context is derived from "rubber duck debugging", which is literally just explaining your code out loud to a literal rubber duck until you figure out why your program isn't working. 🦆

[shadowhive]

Ohhh that’s interesting! I’d never heard of it before but it makes sense that saying it aloud could help

[tippetariuswrites]

I think that's part of what makes writing for a fandom so attractive. A lot of the groundwork has already been laid for you, with defined rules you can play by or break as your story demands. I would almost argue that it's easier to be *more* creative within that kind of framework, because then you're not bogged down with creating a world from scratch, trying to make it unique yet believable, defining cultures and systems of government, filling it with people, etc. I feel like I'd have to really push myself not to recreate Tolkien's Middle Earth, or Bethesda's Tamriel, or the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender... and that's long before I'd get around to the stuff I really care about, the characters and their stories.

[alexseanchai]

that's a big part of it, I think. I don't think it's all of it, because there are whole genres where there's no worldbuilding, just research. (and if you set a cozy mystery or a contemporary romance in the same town you live in, or a lightly fictionalized version thereof, then you probably don't even need the research.)

[tippetariuswrites]

True, there are plenty of genres with very little worldbuilding involved. For some reason it rarely appeals to me, partly because it's too familiar (I'd rather project myself into another world), and partly because it can still involve a lot of decisions before you get to work with the things you care about. I'd still have to come up with situations and characters that I feel invested in, and until then, I'm mostly trying to invent a reason to tell a story that I can get excited about, if that makes any sense?

[alexseanchai]

oh indeed

tbh I'm about to decide that the queer Hallmark-Christmas-movie romance novel I want to write stars people who are totally not the canonical leads of my current major fandom, absolutely not, where would you get that idea, it's utterly ridiculous. (I wouldn't exactly be the first person to move from fanfic to original novels that way.)

[tippetariuswrites]

Oh yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if many original novels started out as fanfic, or as might-as-well-be-fanfic stories. Might even be a great way to go about it. I have a feeling if I ever worked on an original novel, it would kinda be a disguised response to another story, like, THIS is how it should have been, and THIS is what the characters involved should have done, etc.

[silveradept]

I'm pretty character driven as well, so fic makes it easier for me to say "which of these settings and characters would make it easiest to tell the story I have envisioned?", but there's also a certain amount of fun in writing exchange works where the setting and the characters and possibly a plot outline or a theme are set in front of you and a work comes out of that. That might be high creativity when it feels like low creativity.

Ah, and it just came to mind a thing that Seanan Mcguire said, specifically, and that may have been said by others, but Seanan specifically enjoyed writing poetry because of the constraints imposed on the writer to make the work fit the form. There are others who I think also find constraints very useful in getting their creative work going, because it reduces the problem space and closes off what might have been the normal solution to the problem. Bigger creativity that comes from working with small constraints.

[tippetariuswrites]

Constraints, yes, exactly! It seems like having no limits or rules to tie you down should lead to more creativity, but it generally works the other way. There's a good quote from Stephen Sondheim that seems to fit: "If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want."

[alexseanchai]

this is exactly why people look at me funny when I say I love sonnets

[alexseanchai]

this is why "drabble" needs to stop meaning things that aren't "one hundred words exactly"!

(recently discovered that someone legitimately thought "drabble" refers to stories of at most ten chapters and at most 15K words. did an epic double-take.)

[silveradept]

That is a remarkably wide possibility of drabble. Perhaps they got that impression from the works that are one drabble a chapter?

[alexseanchai]

that only works if they've only seen such collections where (1) the author meant 'ficlet' or whatever (2) nothing about the work identifies it as containing multiple stories

…I think

[greerwatson]

"this is why "drabble" needs to stop meaning things that aren't 'one hundred words exactly'"

Hear, hear!

[enemytosleep]

Please feel free to talk about royal purples as well! I love the term rubber duck for bouncing ideas.

[alexseanchai]

agreed, the purple essay sounds fascinating

[cornerofmadness]

to help someone develop their idea by asking questions and trying to understand things better, which might provide insight on how to get past their block, whatever it may be I think this is a very important thing really

[alexseanchai]

it really is

[cornerofmadness]

I need it often for my original fiction.

[abyss_valkyrie]

WHOA!!Okay,that was a really insightful post and what a line of thought. I did often have my own ideas for drawing and used to do original ones before I got sucked into drawing fanarts.
If creating something out of nothing is what counts as creative,I don't know who counts as creative, because I think everyone writes stories inspired by another one. But I guess you mean in an original way? Like AU fics that only take the characters out of a story and build a whole new world.

Also I absolutely consider it a win if my recipient enjoys the work I created for them,their words mean the most to me though I treasure every comment,of course!

Buuuut my 14 yr old self certainly might have been creative; writing chapters of story in a notebook about a group of friends(based off of my real life friend circle & my crazy infatuation for one guy) going to a dead town filled with monsters (inspired heavily by silent hill) where romance eventually ensues. -__-
My gosh, the things teens do!XD

[silveradept]

I have some of my much older work in a notebook, too. It's still derived from other things, but I can look at it and go "you are a person who is learning the forms and tropes of storytelling, and you are doing an excellent job of imitation" and be okay with it.

What counts as original these days is very subjective (and "original" tends to be applied more when men write than when anybody else does), but it still seems to have an underlying belief that authors have a unique idea and write it to completion, or an artist had a unique idea and expresses it, rather than a work that knows what it is inspired by and then puts a new twist on it.

[greerwatson]

"I'm much more of a refiner, a person who can take the kernel of someone else's idea and produce something out of that"

Which seems like the essence of fan fiction, especially when worldbuilding is involved. Something in canon sparks the idea. Without that spark, there wouldn't be the impetus to write. Nor is it apprentice work before you start writing "real fiction" (a response I've had, as have so many other fans). Far too much work goes into it—not just shaping and polishing, but extrapolating and elucidating canon.

Sometimes the "kernel" that sparks the story is very slight; so the story is almost all made from the whole cloth. Sometimes it's multiple kernels that don't quite seem to fit, needing a lot of thought to resolve contradictions. All of this is sure as hell creative!

As for meta: that's writing down those introspections, isn't it? The alternative is to just keep them shut up in your own head, which is a bit dog-in-the-manger. Someone else's analysis can be illuminating or provocative—and thus itself spark creativity.

People who don't find their spark in canon still have to find it somewhere. Just because they swipe ideas from RL (and like as not someone else's RL) doesn't make them more creative!

[silveradept]

Anyone who thinks of fanfic solely as the amateur leagues before "real" writing is sorely mistaken and should be shouted down by the angry buzzing of fans when they voice that opinion.

There still is the idea that "real" creativity can't be easily traced to a singular source outside of the creator's life and passes whatever nebulous critical test is applied to it to make sure its not "derivative" or hasn't put in enough work to be different in some meaningful way from its inspiration(s).

Because there has to be an "us" and a "them", I guess, or they'd have to admit that fanworks are just as creative as original ones and the real difference is whether someone is getting paid for their work enough to avoid infringing a copyright.